The Girl with Seven Names is an incredible memoir filled with suspense, drama, and bravery from a young girl who couldn’t even keep her name but overcame every obstacle in her path. After escaping North Korea, crossing China, and finally reaching South Korea, Hyeonseo Lee tells us her passionate story about every experience leading up to her arrival in South Korea, hunger, cold, fear, threats, and other complicated events took place in Lee’s Journey to obtain the freedom she deserved. As a North Korean defector, Hyeonseo Lee delivers an ambitious and powerful story about her escape from North Korea and the struggles to adapt into a completely different society. As a young girl, Hyeonseo Lee grew up believing that her country was “the best …show more content…
She uses vivid descriptions, images, moods, symbols and word choices. For example, Hyeonseo Lee is not the name she was born with, or a name she was forced on, the name she carries is a name she choose for herself so that she may live the life she wants. The symbolism behind her many names adds to the identity she gained through her personal journey. Everytime she was forced on to take a new identity she felt further away from who she was, “I was already hiding beneath so many lies that I hardly knew who I was any more. I was becoming a non-person,” she portrays the internal struggles she felt because of her inability to keep anything as simple as her name so that she may overcome all the obstacles and attain her goal to be free. The author uses her style as a way to incorporate her ideas smoothly. She describes anything from her clothes to her goverment in great detail so that she may add the images the readers may need to understand the ideas as a whole. “It was an aspiring neighbourhood that retained a faint edge of slum, typical of Shanghai. Pensioners in Mao-era padded jackets would sit on doorsteps playing mah-jong, oblivious to the Prada-clad girls sweeping past on their way to work”as she describe a city in China her style gives the readers a clear image of what she witnessed. Hyeonseo Lee’s vivid style contributes to the success of her
This story goes on talking about the past in the concentration camp all of a sudden. Hannah is back at the dining room table and notices the tattoo on Aunt Eva's arm and recognizes it. She says the numerical significance of the number to Aunt Eva, who says that when she was young she was known by another name, Rivka. After coming to America, many of the survivors changed their names. Grandpa Will, Eva's brother, was known as Wolfe before.
Shin Dong-hyuk was born in a labor camp, more specifically known as Camp 14. In this camp, Shin was considered to be living “below the law” (3) because of his father’s brother’s crimes. In this camp, Shin went through things many people couldn’t even fathom. He survived on his own. His mother would beat him, his father ignored him, and he trusted no one. “Before he learned anything else, Shin learned to survive by snitching on all of them.” (3). In this camp, the word “family” did not exist. All of this sounds horrific to many people living outside of North Korea, but that’s just the beginning of it. His life became increasingly worse when his mother and brother made the decision to try and escape the camp. On April 5, 1996, Shins older brother, He Guen, came home. As He Guen was talking to Shin’s mother, he overheard that “his brother was in trouble a...
Born in 1894, Hee Kyung Lee grew up in Taegu, Korea. Although the details of her early life are not given, the reader can assume that she came from a decent middle class family because her parents had servants (Pai 2, 10). In the early 1900’s, Japan exercised immense control over Korea, which by 1910 was completely annexed. Her twenty-year-old sister and eighteen-year-old Lee were introduced to the picture bride system, an opportunity to escape the Japanese oppression (Pai 4). Unlike her older sister, Lee made the decision to immigrate to Hawaii in 1912 as a pictu...
Adams Johnson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Orphan Master’s Son, amazingly depicts the disturbing lives of North Koreans and government horrors through its simplistic language with relatable characters. The Orphan Master’s Son takes place in North Korea and revolves around Jun Do, who is the son of an orphan master, but who receives the shame that Koreans place on orphans. Then he enters the military where he learns different fighting tactics and becomes a professional kidnapper for the North Koreans. For his reward, the government assigns Jun Do to a listening position on a fishing boat where he becomes a hero for fighting the Americans with a story that the fishing crew and he invented to keep from getting placed in a prison camp after to one of their crewmates defects. Jun Do then goes to Texas as a translator, where he learns about freedom and other cultures. When the mission fails the government sends him to a camp where Jun Do’s name and identity die.
...in her essay “No Name Woman”. The Chinese tradition of story telling is kept by Kingston in her books. Becoming Americanized allowed these women the freedom to show their rebellious side and make their own choices. Rebelling against the ideals of their culture but at the same time preserving some of the heritage they grew up with. Both woman overcame many obstacles and broke free of old cultural ways which allowed them an identity in a new culture. But most importantly they were able to find identity while preserving cultural heritage.
Chang portrays the complexity of Henry’s character by showing the conflict that he faces both in his personal and professional life. His confusion towards his own Cultural identity is noticed in his relationships with his co-workers as well as with his family. His personal relationship with his family, especially with his father and his wife exemplifies the clash between the two cultures which seems to tear Henry apart. Leila, Henry’s wife, seems to epitomize the traditional American Culture which Henry tries very hard to be a part of. Her forthright nature along with the independence and individuality contradicts the stereotypical qualities of an Asian wife. However, Henry’s desperation is seen in his forgiving attitude towards Leila’s action and behavior. His deter...
By juxtaposing both the English and Mandarin language, Wong is effectively showcasing and questioning the institutional dominance the English language may possesses over both worldwide linguistics as well as individual’s freedom of expression; Stating we may need to break free from the constraining borders English may pose on an individual, and instead write or speak in any way we wish in hopes of effectively getting our point across. The narrator wants herself and others to break free from the strict dominant borders, empowering others to live a life filled with full freedom of expression regardless of one’s style of writing or minority
In the novel, “The Girls with Seven Names” by Hyeonseo Lee, one can identify the adversity the author encounters, leaving North Korea and discovering the truth about her country. I characterize her as a courageous, smart, independent, and a survivor. Through her book, one can identify the corruption within the government, contrabands, the persistent fear over North Koreans, and importance of someone’s songbun. I really liked this novel because it reminded me of my mom’s experience leaving Guatemala and her experience in the United States.
For instance, in "My Escape from North Korea" at 7:28, "since [her] family couldn't speak Chinese, she had to guide them...2,000 miles in China, and then to Southeast Asia." Lee had to have the drive to travel that far with her family. Especially since Lee was the only one who could speak fluent Chinese, the rest of her family could have easily been caught. If Lee didn’t have the determination to guide her family a long way across China and the Koreas, she could be trapped in a jail to this day. Hyonseo also shows this trait when she says, "Because many...stay in contact with family members still inside...we send information and money that is helping change North Korea...("My Escape from North Korea," 10:44) .”Her experience inspired her to help others in similar situations. Lee continues to risk her life and her freedom by giving information to help other people to survive through the same problem. She shows to everyone that she wants to help others, like her family and her friends, when times are rough. Lee shows that determination can help survivors move forward through their
By any measure, The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong, known as Hanjungnok (Records written in silence), is a remarkable piece of Korean literature and an invaluable historical document, in which a Korean woman narrated an event that can be described as the ultimate male power rivalry surrounding a father-son conflict that culminates in her husband’s death. However, the Memoirs were much more than a political and historical murder mystery; writing this memoir was her way of seeking forgiveness. As Haboush pointed out in her informative Introduction, Lady Hyegyong experienced a conflict herself between the demands imposed by the roles that came with her marriage, each of which included both public and private aspects. We see that Lady Hyegyong justified her decision to live as choosing the most public of her duties, and she decided that for her and other members of her family must to be judged fairly, which required an accurate understanding of the her husband’s death. It was also important to understand that Lady Hyegyong had to endure the
In analyzing these two stories, it is first notable to mention how differing their experiences truly are. Sammy is a late adolescent store clerk who, in his first job, is discontent with the normal workings of society and the bureaucratic nature of the store at which he works. He feels oppressed by the very fabric and nature of aging, out-of date rules, and, at the end of this story, climaxes with exposing his true feelings and quits his jobs in a display of nonconformity and rebellion. Jing-Mei, on the other hand, is a younger Asian American whose life and every waking moment is guided by the pressures of her mother, whose idealistic word-view aids in trying to mold her into something decent by both the double standards Asian society and their newly acquired American culture. In contrasting these two perspectives, we see that while ...
Uncertain about her identity, Kingston relied on her mother’s narratives to aid her in the process of finding her independence and discovering who she was. Although Brave Orchid frequently enforced Chinese customs amongst her daughters, she often contradi...
The people of Hee's village deal with crippling poverty and hunger, and struggle to feed their families. They deal with joblessness, and those who do find work deal with terrible working conditions or jobs that are otherwise distasteful, like prostitution. They deal with pollution and bedbugs and death, and too many horrors to mention. However, based on Hee's presentation, the story seems less about the terrible conditions which all the people must face, but rather about the fact that the people persevere and overcome these challenges, even as they are tortured by them. Chinatown by Oh Jung Hee is a coming of age story which describes the author's experience of learning about birth, life, and death while living in a Korean shanty
“Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested our strengths to establish realities”(5). In the book “The Woman Warrior,” Maxine Kingston is most interested in finding out about Chinese culture and history and relating them to her emerging American sense of self. One of the main ways she does so is listening to her mother’s talk-stories about the family’s Chinese past and applying them to her life.
The narrator's struggle to make sense of the story through her Americanized perspective also helps to reveal a great deal about traditional Chinese culture, the aunt and mother's traditional viewpoints allow us to better explore and understand the Americanized view of the daughter. What she discovers is that the Chinese women back in the Old Country, like their male counterparts, had to sacrifice their individuality, personal goals, desires, and loves in order to more fully harmonize with the community. This is a problem for Kingston because she was raised in a nation that emphasized individualism and assertiveness. As a result, she is caught in a struggle to find meaning in her cultural roots as a Chinese woman and in her American upbringing.